When doctors won't tell . . .
Of all the online nutritional information, nutritional facts, medical and
dietary sites there are to choose from, in an article entitled "How
to ease the pain" The Sunday Times magazine,
Culture, published a list of just five websites it
considered reliable and informative.This site was one of that five.

CONDITIONS
AND DISEASES PREVENTED AND HELPED BY A LOW-CARB, HIGH-FAT DIET

Mortality rate for new-born
rats six times higher when mother was fed on a diet of modified
soya

Women who eat GM foods while pregnant risk endangering their unborn
babies, startling new research suggests.

The study - carried out by a leading scientist at the Russian Academy
of Sciences - found that more than half of the offspring of rats
fed
on modified soya died in the first three weeks of life, six times
as
many as those born to mothers with normal diets. Six times as many
were also severely underweight.

The research - which is being prepared for publication - is just
one
of a clutch of recent studies that are reviving fears that GM food
damages human health. Italian research has found that modified soya
affected the liver and pancreas of mice. Australia had to abandon
a
decade-long attempt to develop modified peas when an official study
found they caused lung damage.

And last May this newspaper revealed a secret report by the biotech
giant Monsanto, which showed that rats fed a diet rich in GM corn
had
smaller kidneys and higher blood cell counts, suggesting possible
damage to their immune systems, than those that ate a similar conventional
one.

The United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation held a workshop
on the safety of genetically modified foods at its Rome headquarters
late last year. The workshop was addressed by scientists whose
research had raised concerns about health dangers. But the World
Trade
Organisation is expected next month to support a bid by the Bush
administration to force European countries to accept GM foods.

The Russian research threatens to have an explosive effect on already
hostile public opinion. Carried out by Dr Irina Ermakova at the
Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology of the
Russian Academy of Sciences, it is believed to be the first to look
at
the effects of GM food on the unborn.

The scientist added flour from a GM soya bean - produced by Monsanto
to be resistant to its pesticide, Roundup - to the food of female
rats, starting two weeks before they conceived, continuing through
pregnancy, birth and nursing. Others were given non-GM soyaand a
third
group was given no soya at all.

She found that 36 per cent of the young of the rats fed the modified
soya were severely underweight, compared to 6 per cent of the
offspring of the other groups. More alarmingly, a staggering 55.6
per
cent of those born to mothers on the GM diet perished within three
weeks of birth, compared to 9 per cent of the offspring of those
fed
normal soya, and 6.8 per cent of the young of those given no soya
at
all.

"The morphology and biochemical structures of rats are very
similar to
those of humans, and this makes the results very disturbing"
said Dr
Ermakova.
"They point to a risk for mothers and their babies."

Environmentalists say that - while the results are preliminary -
they
are potentially so serious that they must be followed up. The American
Academy of Environmental Medicine has asked the US National Institute
of Health to sponsor an immediate, independent follow-up.

The Monsanto soya is widely eaten by Americans. There is little
of it,
or any GM crop, in British foods though it is imported to feed animals
farmed for meat.

Tony Coombes, director of corporate affairs for Monsanto UK, said:
"The overwhelming weight of evidence from published, peer-reviewed,
independently conducted scientific studies demonstrates that Roundup
Ready soy can be safely consumed by rats, as well as all other animal
species studied."

What the experiment found

Russian scientists added flour made from a GM soya to the diet of
female rats two weeks before mating them, and continued feeding
it to
them during pregnancy, birth and nursing. Others were give non-GM
soya or none at all.
Six times as many of the offspring of those fed the modified soya
were
severely underweight compared to those born to the rats given normal
diets.
Within three weeks, 55.6 per cent of the young of the mothers given
the modified soya died, against 9 per cent of the offspring of those
fed the conventional soya.

Can GM Soy be Deadly?

Rats were divided into several groups, one of
which was given a diet to which 5-7 grams of Monsanto's "Roundup
Ready" GM soy flour had been added; the others were fed similar
diets containing no GM soy. The diets began two weeks before the
rats became pregnant, and continued throughout pregnancy and nursing.

Low Birth Weight

A number of offspring from the GM-fed mothers
were born unusually small, and after two weeks, 36 percent of them
weighed less than 20 grams, compared to about 6 percent from the
other groups.

More Than Half the Rats Died

Within three weeks, more than half of the rats
from the GM soy group died, compared to less than 10 percent from
the other groups.

Roundup Ready GM soy's DNA contains bacterial
genes that allow the soy plant to survive treatment with Monsanto's
"Roundup" brand herbicide. Some 85 percent of the soy
gown in the United States is Roundup Ready. Soy is present in the
majority of processed foods sold in the United States, so most Americans
eat Roundup Ready soy in some form every day.

No Safety Tests Required

The FDA does not require any safety tests on genetically
modified foods. There have been less than 20 published, peer-reviewed
animal feeding safety studies and no human clinical trials.

Every infant soy milk formula sold in New Zealand contains genetically
modified soy, the Government says. But acting food safety minister
Damien O'Connor would still not name the brands yesterday. Green
MP Sue Kedgley has been demanding the names of the affected formulas
since a survey revealed four were contaminated.

Mothers Against Genetic
Engineering in Food and the Environment has called for a boycott
on all soy formulas till the brands are disclosed. Officials have
refused to shed light on the brands because the contamination
is not high enough to break GM labelling laws. The Food Safety
Authority said it had sampled all four formulas available in New
Zealand and all four contained GM. Yesterday in Parliament Mr
O'Connor came close to revealing the names, confirming that all
soy formulas had been tested for GM and "all four were positive".

Ms Kedgley then named the
four brands listed on the Health Ministry's website - Karicare
Soya 1, Karicare starter formula, Infasoy and Infasoy progress.
Did it follow, she asked, that they were the contaminated brands?

Mr O'Connor replied that
he did not know.

Asked if there was a moral
obligation to tell people what foods had GM in them given that
Britain's Royal Society had expressed reservations about the safety
of GM infant food, Mr O'Connor said that there had been 20 approved
GM organisms in the country since 1998 "and I am not aware
of any death or illness from the consumption of those products".

Madge spokeswoman Alana
Currie said she had fielded calls from dozens of mothers wanting
to know which brands were affected and some promising to give
soy milk up. "People are really angry," she said. Without
long-term testing on the effects of eating GM, it was irresponsible
to declare them safe. "I would like them to prove that it
is safe to eat, not just say no one has died from it yet,"
she said.

Government must reveal contaminated baby
food

Green MP Sue Kedgley is
calling on the New Zealand Minister for Food Safety Annette King
to release the names of four infant formulas that the Food Safety
Authority found to be contaminated with genetically engineered
soy.

Ms Kedgley, the Green Food
Safety spokesperson revealed that the recent NZFSA audit of food
manufacturers and importers found that four tested infant formulas
contained 0.2 or 0.3 per cent of genetically engineered soy.

"It is vital that
the public is informed which are the soy infant formulas that
contained GE contamination so that concerned parents can avoid
purchasing these formulae," said Ms Kedgley.

"It is alarming to
discover that some infant formulas contain unlabelled GE soy that
has never been tested on humans or undergone proper, independent
safety testing.

"Many parents would
be horrified to learn that they were feeding their infants genetically
engineered products.

"With the rising rate
of allergies to soy products in the USA and UK being linked to
GE soy, it is even more critical that parents can make this choice,"
said Ms Kedgley.

Other food products found
to contain GE contaminants included six different samples of corn
chips, sandwich ham, pork luncheon, and sausage meat.

Ms Kedgley is calling on
the Government to release the names of all food products that
were found to contain GE ingredients in the survey, so that consumers
can have the right to make informed purchasing decisions.

"The public has a
right to know what is in the food they eat. The Government must
come clean on what products it has found to have GE contamination,
especially for our younger people."

Ms Kedgley will be asking
questions of the Minister in Parliament today to publicly identify
the contaminated products with the full results of the NZFSA report,
Assessment of Compliance with Standard 1.5.2.

Related Links

Dr
Mercola and GM Soy

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